Native PWA Support

[mr-cheffy]

What feature would you like to see?

Native PWA support. Firefox doesn't have it by default so I was wondering if it could be added to Zen. This will be an an awesome feature.

What platform are you seeing the problem on?

Linux

Additional context

No response

~ Created automatically from issue: #560

[sidsharths1245]

There is an extension that adds this functionality.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwas-for-firefox/
I tried it but the zen theme/colour scheme doesn't apply to it and it also looks very janky. Native support on zen would be great.

To add, ut seems firefox may be working on this as well but I don't have ny expectations. They have a history of taking a bazillion years just to implement most basic features.
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/how-can-firefox-create-the-best-support-for-web-apps-on-the/m-p/60561#M21220

[tildebyte]

The whole point of PWAs is that they are sandboxed - you don't WANT them running in your main browser process... otherwise, you'd just open them in a new window.

[Urbautz]

Main point for me is that is feels like a native app - without the browser "overhead" (Adress Bar, Tabs ...). Modern browsers anyway do isolation of tabs for security, this is nothing PWA specific.

[erkkimon]

Another problem in Extensions is trust. I'm not sure if I want to trust extensions in terms of privacy.

[bcrtvkcs]

The whole point of PWAs is that they are sandboxed - you don't WANT them running in your main browser process... otherwise, you'd just open them in a new window.

Nope it's not pwa's creation point. It should work simultaneously with web framework and your web cookies at the exact same time. You can capsule it to another container yourself if you want

[DeepBlueBubble]

Main point for me is that is feels like a native app - without the browser "overhead" (Adress Bar, Tabs ...). Modern browsers anyway do isolation of tabs for security, this is nothing PWA specific.

Yeah it is them same reason why I like PWA and I can organise my webs more easily and effortlessly

[ghost]

[Lenni-builder]

Why don't you start a new discussion about that? It makes this one a but cluttered.

[Lenni-builder]

Floorp, another Firefox fork, already has PWA support (even though it's Windows-only and shows things like a URL bar that PWAs in other browsers normally don't have) which you might be able to borrow from them.

[Samueru-sama]

The PWAs in floorp (and firedragon which is a fork) already work on linux and you can disable showing the URL bar.

[Lenni-builder]

The last time I checked neither of those features existed, but it's nice they added them. Do you still have access to the browser's menu/extensions when disabling the title bar (similar to how it is done in Chromium)?

[Samueru-sama]

The last time I checked neither of those features existed, but it's nice they added them. Do you still have access to the browser's menu/extensions when disabling the title bar (similar to how it is done in Chromium)?

I don't have access to the menus when the titlebar is disabled, but extensions still work and that is the main the reason I need PWAs.

Here you can see the discord PWA with vimium-c extension working (it is those key combinations that show up over clickable options) and no titlebar on firedragon (fork of floorp):

[nizasichi]

When I use Single Sign On (SSO), Firefox opens a window for authentication. (I was authenticating with Apple on Reddit).

A few adjustments could be made, such as removing the URL bar (preferably adding a toggle for users who would like to have it).

This could be what @Lenni-builder was referring to.

[Lenni-builder]

This was not really what I was referring to, what I meant was that the Floorp browser (Firefox based) has built-in PWA support that the Zen devs might be able to port over.

[Urbautz]

Just came across the new browser, and first look it awesome!
PWA support is the only thing i would miss over Edge.
I think making things accessible is also solved best there (One button to access Extension Settings and stuff).

[MimzyFang]

Floorp has that feature built in though it is a bit buggy especially on Linux and therefore is disabled by default

[Lenni-builder]

I already wrote a comment suggesting forking that feature from Floorp before

[MimzyFang]

overlooked that thanks for mentioning it

[Axenide]

This would be great, specially if it had system tray support. (For Linux please :D).

[Axenide]

Maybe @Axenide means Notifications? Which are already working.

Not at all, I mean having it running in the background without it necessarily being a minimized window, something like Discord, Telegram or Spotify.

[Lenni-builder]

I don't think that's a feature the PWA specifications have, or at least I couldn't find anything about it.

[Axenide]

I don't think that's a feature the PWA specifications have, or at least I couldn't find anything about it.

Yeah, me neither, but it would be a good feature.
For example, there is a node package called "nativefier" which creates electron apps for any website, and this includes system tray support. It would be great to have something like this but with Zen as PWAs.

[MimzyFang]

nativefier is no longer being developed and therefor not getting any security updates I would recommend not using it anymore

[Axenide]

nativefier is no longer being developed and therefor not getting any security updates I would recommend not using it anymore

Yeah, I don't use it, but I was just saying why I think having system tray support would be a nice feature.

Anyway, I don't know the limitations of Firefox for something like this, I remember that in older versions there was an extension that allowed Firefox to be minimized to the system tray, so maybe this could be possible?

[GunGunGun]

We better wait for Firefox, they're implementing native PWA after Tab Group, so it would be a waste of resource to duplicate our work.

[Lenni-builder]

@m1212e Since (upstream) Firefox Nightly now has a flag for this feature and it is very actuvely being worked on you should look there, Zen probably won't get its own implementation shortly before one is added to Firefox.

[Urbautz]

@Lenni-builder Could you point me to this flag? I might be to stupid to find it. Thank you!

[Lenni-builder]

@Urbautz It's browser.taskbarTabs.enabled, but it doesn't do anything yet: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/03/firefox-nightly-supports-web-apps-taskbar-tabs

[slatkin]

So after a few years of work, they added an option that does nothing to a nightly build; this does not seem like it is very actively being worked on.

[Lenni-builder]

I think I read that it does something on Windows by now, but it's far from fully implemented

[erkkimon]

+1

Stuff that is daily used in the internet are mostly PWA or SPA. Firefox extension works quite fine, but it would work much better if it would be integrated in the browser itself like in Chrome. For example, I haven't been able to open deeplinked URLs in the PWA if using the extension.

Especially as a GNU/Linux user, I rely heavily on PWAs. I believe I'm not the only one. Thank God they are very good and well supported nowadays.

[giaaaacomo]

just wanted to update everyone: despite me being super skeptical about it, mozilla seems to be actively working on this, coming to nightly soon:

[DustGalaxy]

I want to know if work is underway to implement native PWA support for zen?

[pol5xc]

Firefox' taskbar apps seem to be enabled in the last version of zen, although zen's own sidebar still shows up for me. Pressing "new tab" results in a new tab being open in another window of zen.

I'm posting the full desktop because, as you can see from the screenshot, the PWAs are merged with the main process, but this is a limitation of Firefox implementation, at least on linux (I don't have any windows machine to test the behaviour there).

I tested with these instructions.

For reference, this is how it looks on firefox.

[jzetterman]

It would be really handy if Zen added a CLI flag for hiding the sidebar. Then you could achieve this without it. Something like this:
zen-browser -P "Default (release)" --hide-sidebar --new-window https://youtube.com

[jaishsphereops]

It would be really handy if Zen added a CLI flag for hiding the sidebar. Then you could achieve this without it. Something like this: zen-browser -P "Default (release)" --hide-sidebar --new-window https://youtube.com

They should just add a --app flag like chromium... So we can just do <browser-name> --app <url>

[jzetterman]

Agreed, I think that's more on Firefox to implement first though.

[jaishsphereops]

True, idk why Firefox has never implemented PWAs properly...

[Pshemas]

Yeah, for me it is one of the biggest missing features as well - especially on Linux.

But as @jzetterman suggested - I think a CLI argument for invoking the app without bars / menus and opening specific website would be enough for know. In fact that's what I do in Chromium browser (--app argument) as it works much better with tiling window managers over "Create app" that is available in the menu (which adds titlebar etc).